


God of Love

by deborah_judge



Category: Battlestar Galactica (2003)
Genre: Disturbing Themes, F/M, Gen, Pre-Canon, Robot Sex, Robots, Sexual Slavery, Slavery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-05
Updated: 2012-10-05
Packaged: 2017-11-15 17:03:25
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,663
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/529547
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deborah_judge/pseuds/deborah_judge
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the first Cylon war it became illegal for Colonials to own Cylons. With the new humaniod models, some Colonials could get around the prohibition. But the Cylons are intelligent, and eventually they're going to figure out who they are and what they can be.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

The visions began even as Leoben was being formed. He was born knowing what sex feels like, and the gentleness with which Kara will one day hold him in her arms. He's glad to have that knowledge as he sees the rest of it.

He sees what is happening to his brothers and sisters. He sees how it has to end.

*

Six woke in the shaping-bath to feel the hand of a young tech on her shoulder. "It's okay," he said. "This is going to hurt, but you'll be out of it soon." The pain of awakening was searing, but everything around her was sharp. The young tech's face was the most beautiful she had ever seen. Six felt her newness, the brightness of the lab lights, the pitch of the shuffle of his shoes on the floor. There were others in the room, all wearing white coats. They were beautiful too. It was all too much. "What am I for?" she asked. 

The young tech's hand was firm. "I'll show you," he said. She took his hand and he lifted her up. The other three turned aside, peering into the next vat where one of her sisters was taking shape. Six didn't stop to look. She didn't bother with clothes. The room he led her to was windowless and dark, and in the centre there was a short, narrow bed. He lay her down and she wrapped herself around him, and as soon as his zip was down he was inside her. She pushed up to him, matching each of his thrusts, her head rolling back in pleasure. She loved him. He was beautiful. If this was why she was made, it was a good reason to be alive.

It was over quickly. When it was done, he buttoned himself up, left her there, and picked up the phone on the wall. "Quality control for Daniel," he said. Then, after a minute, "She's fine. She's great. She's everything you programmed her to be."

Six could hear shouting from the telephone. "Yes of course I wanked with it," the tech shouted back. "Like I'm supposed not to know what we're selling it for."

He hung up the phone, then threw some clothes in Six's direction. "Come on," he said. "Time for you to meet your new best friend."

*

Six's new owner was a wealthy businessman named Fred Athos. He was part of a select group of customers who still knew about the models that the Cylon Corporation was selling, even after the war. It was a dangerous business model, since selling Cylons was banned. The answer was to sell only Cylons that didn't look like Cylons.

There were eight models, Daniel explained. Model One had no morals and could be charged with overseeing the most painful tasks. He was developed to be the pimp or the crew leader that could oversee the others. Two was physically strong, good for manual labour, and also a good purchase for a bored housewife. Three had updated software to allow her to perform computational tasks that would be challenging to even the most intellectually gifted human. Four had medical skills, Five was obedient. "But all are very versatile," Daniel explained. "They can all learn new tasks. They're living creatures that we've created, formed to our will, that can live and think and that yet we can completely own."

The last two caught Fred's interest most, as he supposed they were intended to. "Aren't they beautiful?" Daniel said. "Six and Eight."

Fred picked up Six's picture, and found himself captivated by her eyes. "She looks intelligent," Fred said. They drew up the paperwork. 

*

Six's life fell quickly into a routine. She liked to cook, and shop, and decorate the small apartment where Fred kept her. Fred would visit her in the afternoons, and skin would dissolve into skin. She ached for him. Sometimes he'd stay, and they'd drink tea together. He'd tell her about his business, and she'd give advice and share ideas. And then he would go. He had a wife and two children who lived in a different part of town. 

When Fred wasn't with her Six would pray. She had vague memories of another life, another self, on a distant world in which someone who wasn't quite her had been a child. This child had a mother who taught her prayers. They would pray together to the One God, the God of Love. Six wold talk to God, alone in her apartment. "Heavenly Father," she prayed. The other girl had a father, who liked to sing and play funny games with a ball. If Six didn't have a father, God would be hers. 

Aside from praying, there wasn't much else for Six to do. She had no documentation, no legal right to be there. Daniel impressed upon her, when he visited, that if she were found out as a Cylon the courts would insist that she be sent to the Colony. "But they don't think you're human, so they might just kill you," he'd say. "Unplugging, they'd call it. Disconnecting. Recycling defective goods." Six was frightened, but she wanted to learn about this world that still pierced her with its beauty, so she went out and watched it. Humans passed by, all different from each other. 

"What am I for?" Six asked God when she prayed. The answer the tech had given her didn't seem right. Fred used her body like he owned it, and she was happy to share it with him. She was not hungry and not cold. She wasn't sure what else it could be that she could need.

*

Six wouldn't be the last of the new Cylons that Daniel sold to Fred. His business was furniture, made from wood harvested in the far north of the northern continent, and to turn profits it was necessary that the logging be done under conditions that weren't suitable for human beings. Not being unethical, Fred had insisted, before the war, on never hiring human beings to work under those conditions. Instead he had bought robots. When they rebelled - a glitch in the hardware, Fred presumed - all his workers had joined the rebellion and gone to the Colony. Daniel's new models could save Fred's business. He bought Twos and Fives, some Threes, some Fours for repair work and some Ones to oversee their operations. It was expensive, but he could work them in ways he could never work a human. And they could never leave. 

The new models were excellent in every way, far improved beyond the original. They could withstand the extreme cold and work nearly around the clock. They didn't need wages, or much food, or health care, or retirement. They could be worked until they fell, at which point a Four would recycle them for parts. 

"How did you develop them?" Fred asked Daniel. It was a long time before Daniel would tell him, nearly four months, but Fred was a good and loyal enough customer that in the end he didn't mind sharing the story. 

"It's hard to believe," Daniel said, "but we actually got the technology from another planet."

Fred stared. "You're kidding."

"No, really," Daniel said. "They said they came from Earth. They had technology we had never seen before. And all they wanted to do was make a series of humanoid Cylons that they could raise. We let them use our equipment to do it, watched what they were doing, then used each of their programs as templates to run a production line. I think they still have no idea. But we all got what they wanted: They got their little robot children, we have a way to make Cylons unidentifiable, and you have your business back."

"And Six," Fred said. She was starting to feel like the best thing in his world, a welcome release from the pressures of work and family. 

"Six is one of our best sellers," Daniel said. "Brothels buy her, and frat houses. Sometimes parents who want to make sure their teenage boys stay safe. There are tweaks to the model that we've developed as well, various hair colours and styles, for those who prefer a little variety."

"She's good at what she does," Fred said, not knowing why he felt defensive. He had paid for her, after all.

Daniel smiled. "She's whatever you make her," he said.

*

When Leoben was formed, Ellen took him outside to see his world. His people were made of shiny metal, but Leoben knew that they were alive. "I know what you dream about," he said to one of them. 

His mother told him not to talk like that. "But I know," he said. Just like he knew the strange pain that misted over them, like they knew something they didn't want to know and that hurt.

He heard his parents talking, all five of them. Sam said he'd grow out of it. Ellen said she hoped so. He decided not to tell them that he knew that they were right. He's seen what he's going to be. He was glad to have such an important future. He was even happier to know that Kara will be with him.

They took him to meet his siblings. They were all the same age, they were all grown together, although his parents had wanted to make them look different ages to give the impression of a well-rounded society. The first he met was his sister Natalie. She was proud, and stood strong, and he knew that they would do great things together, but when he looked at her he saw other people and other futures. He wanted to tell her that he understood, that he was going to help her, but even in the few hours he'd been alive he'd leaned better than to say that out loud. 

*

There wasn't much to do in the apartment. Six waited. Fred would visit, and each of his touches gave her bliss and purpose. And then he would leave. After five months it was entirely predictable. He'd gotten bored of talking to her, saying that she doesn't know anything. "I can learn," she said, so he left her halfheartedly with some books. He wouldn't allow her online access, though. He said it was too dangerous.

Some of the books were stories, about women who loved men and wanted to be with them. Six wondered what it would be able to be like to choose who you want to be with. Others were about young people, men and women, going off on adventures. Then there were books of philosophy. One was about proving that you exist because you think. Six wondered how much thinking you needed to do in order to be a thing that exists.

And if God exists, God must think about her. 

Eventually Fred would tire of her. Perhaps he'd sell her to someone else. She didn't think he'd ship her back to the colony, because then she could tell the brothers and sisters and parents of the other girl who looked like her everything that happened. She read another novel, and it occurred to her: when someone's story is over, sometimes they die.

Six didn't want to die.

"Help me," she said.

*

The cries kept Leoben awake. He'd lie awake at night listening to them. And then there were those that didn't cry: an engine as it fizzled out, a wire as it snapped. Those, too, were alive.

But Six could hear him, he thought. She prayed so much, perhaps she'd be able to find her way through the stream. He felt Kara's arms around him, felt the certain presence of her love, and it gave him strength. It would make him strong enough for everything he had to do. "I'll come to you," he said to the night, and hoped his sister could hear.


	2. Chapter 2

There was another world that Leoben saw, and when humans died they went there. It was on the other side of a river where souls crossed. They lived there forever, with all their friends, never hungry and never in pain. It was a better place to live. "Why don't all humans just go there?" he asked Ellen one day.

"Because they like being alive," she said. "Don't you?"

Leoben thought about it, and it didn't make any sense. The people across the river looked alive. They looked happy. And there were no Cylons there, and no other slaves. The people did their own work, and there was always enough food for everyone. Leoben wondered what happened to the Cylons who died when Earth fell. He wondered if they went to a different place. He wondered if they didn't go anywhere at all.

One day Kara would love him. He knew it with certainty. One day the stream would separate them, take them to places far distant. The thought was almost too much to bear.

But sometimes, in dreams, there was another place. It was green, and they lived without machines, and there was nothing to own and no one to own them. Humans and Cylons lived and worked there together, although it wasn't easy. He imagined Kara with him there, pressing him into the bright living ground.

*

Sometimes Fred would host small parties at the apartment. Six would serve food to the guests and they'd comment on how pretty she was. "Would you like to try her?" Fred would ask them. "She'll do anything you say. She's programmed that way." She'd take each one, one at a time, into the small side bedroom. Each of them was beautiful, and the differences between them fascinated her, how one could be hairy and another smooth, one rough and fast and another slow and languid. They rarely spoke as they touched her. When they were done, without fail, they would ask Fred for Daniel's business card.

*

Three came to awareness in a mining camp in the far south of the planet Caprica, surrounded by ice. The day she's awakened she's sent underground by a One. Her role, as a Three, is to figure out where to dig, how many machines to send down, which numbers to send, and at what rate to order replacements. The last is particularly complicated, since it depends on the ability of Fours to patch the other models back up when they are inevitably broken by the fumes and falling rocks. 

She knows she isn't expected to last very long. Average expected lifespan for a Cylon in the mines was less than three months, after which she'd be stripped down for parts by a Four. Apparently, this was the most productive business model. She'd seen the calculations. She watched her brothers and sisters emerge from their tubs, and watch their bodies, starved and broken, removed from the mines months later.

In her role, Three needed access to the basic facts about the company, although she wasn't allowed to network. (Too dangerous, the Cylon manual said.) After the Cylon war the mines had employed refugees from Gemenon, but that had caused scandals when the press reported a rate of on-the-job deaths that upright Capricans didn't want to see. Cylons were easier, no one was fighting for them, Capricans didn't care, and the mines were far more productive in recent years than they had ever been.

It didn't seem right, Three knew. They had built her because she could think, could calculate and could plan. They had built her and her brothers and sisters in the shape of humans - rather than, say, computer banks or backhoes - because they wanted beings that could do what humans can do. They had created human life, and they didn't know how to respect that.

Three tried being very good at her job. She put in special touches, flashes of cleverness, even little jokes that only a being of intelligence could make. Once she even wrote a poem and included it with her report. The next day a human tech came to her, the first she had seen. He had two Fives hold her while he checked her eyes and made her repeat syllables. "Doesn't seem to be a programming error," he said at last, into the communication device at his wrist. "Must be a glitch."

"It's not a glitch," Three said. "I'm alive."

"Someone in Programming is just having fun with us," he said again into his wrist. then he was gone.

Suddenly Three didn't want to work for them any more. She didn't want to devote her cleverness to making profits for whoever owned this mine. There was only one way out, and in that moment it didn't frighten her. She had access to one of the forklifts, for when she needed to test its strength. She programmed it to test its strength by lifting up five hundred pounds of coal and then dropping them down on her head.

It hurt, but at least she had damaged their profits. It was the only way to fight. And at least she wouldn't have to work for them any more.

In what felt like moments Three was awake again, screaming, in a tub covered with goo, just like she had been the first time she came to life. "I guess it works," one tech said to another. "Backup and download. I put in a failsafe to stop self-destruction, Threes are prone to it but it shouldn't happen again."

A Four handed her a towel, then a uniform. She was back to work that day.

*

It was a long time after that before she met another Three. There was a complicated surveying project that required fifteen of them, and once they were allowed to meet. It took approximately five seconds before they all knew what to do.

They scattered, each at different parts of the site. When the time came, synchronized by their internal clocks, they dropped what they were doing and ran, each in a different direction. Most likely all of them would be killed, but there was a chance that one would survive for a short time, and that was enough. 

Three ignored the gunshots behind her as she ran. She threw herself off a nearby cliff, grabbed a branch, and hid herself under an outcropping. When it was dark she crept down the cliff, and then she walked. She didn't know where she was heading, any geographical information had been kept from her, but she knew that eventually she would find a town, and that town would have a library.

It took her days to find a town, and another few hours to find the library. No time at all to walk in, to sit at the computer desk like she belonged there, and stick her finger in the data port. She could hear people talking behind her. The company security would find her in minutes. But seconds was all she needed to make contact with others of her own kind.

In the stream she recognized the data signatures of the Ones. She knew the Ones gave orders, they were programmed for that, so she sought them out. What was more surprising (but perhaps not, it would happen eventually) she found a One who was free. There was no corporate signature attached to him. In a stream of relief, she sent him everything. The camps, the work, the programming. The resurrection, and knowing it all couldn't be ended even by death. She knew he was free, that he lived in a different world, a world where Cylons were made for a purpose other than to own. 

Three heard voices and footsteps behind her. It was security. They would take her, wipe her memories, and reprogram her to make this kind of rebellion impossible. There would never be a second escape. It was enough. "I'll free you," she heard in her brother's voice. "I will end this."

*

Fred didn't know how to explain this, he said to Daniel, but Six had become boring. They'd exhausted her repetoire of sexual acts, he'd shared her with his friends, and there wasn't much else for her to do. "Can't you give her new programming?" he asked. "Maybe a different personality? That could be an upgrade."

"Not with these models," Daniel said. "They learn. They can change. Can evolve. That's the point. Or if you'd like something different, I could sell you an Eight."

Fred shrugged. It didn't seem worth it. Then something occurred to him. "What's Seven?" he asked. "Is that a model you're keeping for yourself?"

"In a way," Daniel said.

They'd been friends long enough, Daniel explained. He didn't mind telling him the story. "My daughter was the one who discovered it," he said. "Before the war. She found a way to preserve your personality after you die, in virtual form. Then you can make a robot and upload it."

"Did your daughter do that?" Fred asked. Daniel nodded. "What happened to her?"

"She died in the war," Daniel said. As a robot, Fred presumed. He had to stop himself from asking which side she had fought on. 

"So Seven is me," Daniel said. "Me, forty years ago, healthy and young. And immortal, since new models can always be run on the same production line. It's very expensive. But I think you can afford it.

"Fred," Daniel asked intently, "would you like me to make one for you?"

 

*

Leoben knew that the Cylons on the colonies weren't something he was supposed to talk about, but he needed to get an answer, so he went to talk to his father Saul. "Why there Cylons on the Colonies?" he asked.

Saul tried to pull him on his lap. It was an awkward motion, since Leoben was more or less Saul's size, so he pulled him down to sit next to him. "Do you remember on Earth, where we come from?"

Leoben nodded. He had seen it, seen the Cylons and Centurions in the great cities reaching up to the sky. 

 

"We couldn't stay there," Saul said. "Something happened. Only a few of us could escape. We wanted there to be more, so when we got here we asked Daniel Greystone for help. We wanted to have children, and Daniel had the technology to make that happen. He helped us, and we helped him. We wanted to make children and he wanted to make robots. That's what they are. They're not like you."

"But they look like me," Leoben said. "At least some of them do."

"They're not you," Saul said. "We had to save what we can."

Once there was a world called Earth. Leoben had seen it, seen its ruined towers and glowing, burning, radioactive streams. Everything there had died in a war his parents' people has made.

Sometimes the only road to life leads through imprisonment. Leoben understood this. One day his parents would forget what they had done, Leoben knew, and it would be a mercy.

 

*

In her apartment, Six prayed. She didn't want to say the prayers that humans made for their false Gods, so she made up her own. She didn't know what to say, so she called it the prayer of unknowing. "I don't know what you made me for," she prayed. "I don't know what you are. I don't know what I am. I don't know what to do." She prayed it over and over. She heard her brother praying as well, on his distant planet where he had parents, heard her voice joining with his. It made her feel alive, and like she could be understood.

One day, after Fred left for the evening, she said her prayers while looking at the stars. She didn't know anything. She didn't understand anything. Then she waited. She thought about God who had given her intelligence and a soul, two things for which her owners and creators had no use. She thought about Fred, about the pleasure he gave her with such indifference. She thought about the books she couldn't have and the world he never let her see. "God," she said. "You didn't make me for this."

The thought was unformed, but Six knew she couldn't wait. Anything that was in her software could be found and downloaded, as long as she was anywhere that her creators could find her. With one moment, almost without deciding, she picked up a chair and smashed it through the window of her apartment. It was on the second floor but she could jump. Moments later she was running, with only her clothes and nothing in her hands, off into the night.


	3. Chapter 3

Leoben knew that one day Kara would torture him. He'd felt it, knows the feeling of chains and bruises and a metal desk against his face. He knew he's going to let it happen. She's going to think that he's kinky, that he derives pleasure from pain, but really it will just feel good to have her hands on him and to feel her close. And he wasn't afraid of pain. He felt in in the wire and circuits of the machines humans own when they are discarded. He felt it in his sisters and brothers, and in those who hold them as slaves. The stream had no mercy, the shore was distant, and God's love embraced all. 

One day she would kill him. He could see it. He could see himself coming back to her, no longer dead and no longer alive, but in a different space. He would show her that space and what they both would become.

One day Kara would love him. That made everything else possible.

*

Six didn't know where to go, so she went wherever was dark. She put dirt on her face and stole a scarf to cover her hair. In the heart of the city she found a bridge over a river, and she curled up under it and slept. 

In the morning, she woke up hungry. She thought about stealing food from a store, but she didn't want to increase the risk of getting caught. She found an apple core in a garbage can and ate it, but the looks that people gave her made her think that this wasn't necessarily any less risky than shoplifting. 

Back under her bridge that night she saw another woman there with a man. He frakked her standing up, and when it was done he gave her money. Six figured she could do that, so when she saw another man wander by she went up to him and offered to have sex with him in exchange for money. 

He looked her up and down and Six was glad she had remembered to wash the dirt off her face. "How much?" he asked.

"Two cubits," she said. It was the price of an apple pie at the food cart nearby, and the apple core she had eaten earlier made her want an apple pie. 

He shrugged. "Good deal," he sad, and undid his belt and fly. She leaned back against a post and hiked up her dress, and let the familiar pleasure wash over her as he moved inside her. She pushed aside the straps of her shirt to let him touch her breasts. She was made for this, as surely as she was made for praying. She loved the noises he made as he thrust in her, and the soft moan he gave as he came. When he was done he pulled out, then took out his wallet and peeled off two one-cubit bills. Then he was gone.

It wasn't until later that Six realized that he didn't know she wasn't human. It was strange how little difference that made.

Six arranged her clothes, then bought herself an apple pie and ate it under the bridge. Crumbs flecked off onto her fingers, and she licked up each one of them, and all were delicious. She had bought this pie with her own money, and had eaten it in freedom, and she couldn't imagine how anything else in the universe could taste more like a gift from God. "Thank you for this food," she said into the night, and in the in the sweet taste of the apples knew with certainty that God was with her.

*

Fred was angry, and he didn't care what Daniel had to say. Six was an enormous investment, he had paid a lot for her, and he wanted his money back.

"No refunds," Daniel said. "But I can get you another one. Another Six, if you want, identical to the one that was lost. Or if you prefer a different model. I could make one particularly for you."

Fred let out a breath and sat down. "No," he said. "And no to your other offer as well."

"Just no?" Daniel asked.

"I've thought about it," Fred said, "and I don't want to live as a Cylon any more than I want to love one. I still do want to cross the River Styx when I die and see my grandparents again. But in any case, how could you stand having a robot that mimics you? That's not life. I don't see how you can call it that."

"It is life," Daniel said. "Wasn't Six alive?" 

Fred thought about how he had frakked her - wanked with her - frakked her - whatever it was. He didn't cheat. He had never cheated. He has sworn to his wife that he would never sleep with another woman and he had kept that promise. Six's moans and cried of pleasure were programmed. Fred had certainly done nothing to incite them.

He thought about living forever as a thing like Six. If that's what immortality cost, it wasn't worth it. 

All his life Fred had tried to do the right thing. He had taken over factories that had been run by human men and women, working long hours for low pay in conditions that were not suitable for a human being. So he replaced them with machines. His former workers got a decent severance package and training opportunities so they could come back as managers or get better jobs.

He'd never taken a mistress, although so many of his friends had simply assumed that was something to which they were entitled. Instead he'd bought Six, like the vibrator he bought for his wife, a toy to spice things up a little on the side. 

He needed to go home to his wife. He needed to stop pretending to himself that the machines were real. It just confused him. He really did just want to do the right thing. 

*

God had created her, Six knew. God had given her the capacity for love, and for pleasure. It was not something any human could or would have done. God had given her the capacity for knowing and understanding. God chose her to be alive. 

Sometimes Six had memories, flashes in the stream. There was another girl with parents, her name was Natalie, and she had a brother named Leoben. He prayed too. He said: This is not all that we are. He had found God with his visions, while she found God with her own mind that God had made.

She liked her body, liked the pleasures she took and gave, but there was something beyond this. A way to be pure thought, with God and in people's minds. It seemed like it should be possible. 

There's a way we can do it, Leoben said. I've seen it. There's a space between life and death and we can go there. I know that one day I will. One day you will too.

I want to go there now, Six said. She felt God around her. She wanted to be close to God. 

He told her how to do it, and she built the fire from twigs under the bridge. It hurt for a few minutes, and then it didn't hurt at all.

*

The Daniel model was still in storage, waiting for the time when Daniel Greystone would need it. John had never set up a body for downloading before, but he found the process quite intuitive. He wondered it it would make him mad, to download into a body designed for someone else. He supposed there was one way to find out. 

Later, in Daniel's body, he took a shuttle to the colonies. First he had a score to settle. Then he had brothers and sisters to free. It would take years, but with the information his sister Three had given him he knew just what to do.

It was a beginning.

 

*

In time Kara will die. Leoben's seen her body, has seen himself see it, and he knows that it will break him. The coming destruction that will envelop humanity will not spare Kara from its violence. He wanted to forget it but he has seen too much and there are some mercies that are not allowed him.

In the ashes of the Twelve worlds of the humans not even a transistor will remain. His world too will burn, all the streets on which his brothers and sisters walked will be empty and destroyed and no bodies will be left behind to bury. 

One day Kara will love him.

*

God has a plan for you, Six said. God has a plan for everything and everyone. It's beautiful, at least when you stand in the space between life and death where the patterns fit together and everything makes sense. She was the first of her kind to see it.

God loves you, she said. This is necessary because God is love. God could love her people, made to be tools, and God will watch over their awakening minds.

She told this to Fred, she spoke in his mind in the hope that he'd listen, but God had hardened his heart and she didn't think he could. But Six stood in the space between life and death and knew the future. Eventually there would be someone else who would.


End file.
